You awake to the feeling of waves lapping against your legs, followed immediately by the sting of salt in open wounds.
A mere instant prior you and your party were raiding the tomb of Acerlaf Eraksson the Viking Shaman. A figure so shrouded in legend that many stifled laughter at your plans to find his treasures--and they were the polite ones.
Undeterred, you and your merry band of 8 set out to find his tomb, and did just that. Many hours--and 3 dead party members--into your raid you recall rappelling oh-so-carefully into a pit of spikes to find the switch to retract both them and the stone slab blocking passage deeper into the tomb. There had been one in the last three pits, so it seemed like a safe assumption. What wasn't a safe assumption was that the floor of this fourth pit was also really a floor. As you released yourself from your rope, your feet planted momentarily before the false floor collapsed beneath your full weight. A clever trick, as by this point any remaining witnesses would be wise to the pits and not have plunged to their deaths, their corpses triggering the collapse.
A feeling of weightlessness came over you as your plunge into blackness reached free-fall speed. "I am dead," you thought, and rightfully so, not knowing that you would land not on stones, bones, or ironically placed treasure, but in churning waters. That last thing you recall was a blinding purple light.
And now, somehow, here you are. The sun overhead is equally blinding, but a much more familiar yellow. Though you were lucky to land into water rather than onto a much harder surface, you have still been badly injured. You look around for any source of aid...you find instead great iron walls towering above you on three three sides. At your back is the ocean. Even with your water-related injuries, our first instinct is to swim around the reach of the walls but--fortunately, in hindsight--you see enough through the sun's brightness to spy a sign in the distance. You muster the last of your strength to stagger towards it....noticing on your way an adjacent and very oddly placed mine entrance. Unable to fathom a sand mine in any sense of the word, you focus instead on the sign. On its surface are familiar runes; unfortunately, only one remaining member of your party was familiar enough with them to read them, and you are not he. As if sensing this, a magically startling convenience occurs before your weary eyes: the runes slowly reform into English: "Took quite a tumble didn't you? If only you could escape, you could see to your wounds. I do not recommend reentering the water, though. Doing so, by improvised craft or swimming will make me very angry. I will not allow you to escape to heal your wounds, though I make you this promise: if you heal your wounds, I will allow you to escape. And again, if you attempt to leave by any way other than satisfying this condition, I will both kill you and take eternal possession of your soul. -Acerlaf Eraksson"
You turn to look at the waves...and decide perhaps it is better to believe the protean sign, in light of other recent bizarre events.
How will you ever heal yourself though?
You decide you have no choice but to enter the out-of-place mine. As you pass its threshold you see a painfully familiar purple flash of light. You appear to be in an enormous mine, with mundane stone, not sand, walls and row after row of sheds and barrels. If nothing else, it is much cooler here. You feel yourself relaxing in the dim coolness of the mine. You want to lay down. You feel yourself relaxing too much. You are dying.
A mere instant prior you and your party were raiding the tomb of Acerlaf Eraksson the Viking Shaman. A figure so shrouded in legend that many stifled laughter at your plans to find his treasures--and they were the polite ones.
Undeterred, you and your merry band of 8 set out to find his tomb, and did just that. Many hours--and 3 dead party members--into your raid you recall rappelling oh-so-carefully into a pit of spikes to find the switch to retract both them and the stone slab blocking passage deeper into the tomb. There had been one in the last three pits, so it seemed like a safe assumption. What wasn't a safe assumption was that the floor of this fourth pit was also really a floor. As you released yourself from your rope, your feet planted momentarily before the false floor collapsed beneath your full weight. A clever trick, as by this point any remaining witnesses would be wise to the pits and not have plunged to their deaths, their corpses triggering the collapse.
A feeling of weightlessness came over you as your plunge into blackness reached free-fall speed. "I am dead," you thought, and rightfully so, not knowing that you would land not on stones, bones, or ironically placed treasure, but in churning waters. That last thing you recall was a blinding purple light.
And now, somehow, here you are. The sun overhead is equally blinding, but a much more familiar yellow. Though you were lucky to land into water rather than onto a much harder surface, you have still been badly injured. You look around for any source of aid...you find instead great iron walls towering above you on three three sides. At your back is the ocean. Even with your water-related injuries, our first instinct is to swim around the reach of the walls but--fortunately, in hindsight--you see enough through the sun's brightness to spy a sign in the distance. You muster the last of your strength to stagger towards it....noticing on your way an adjacent and very oddly placed mine entrance. Unable to fathom a sand mine in any sense of the word, you focus instead on the sign. On its surface are familiar runes; unfortunately, only one remaining member of your party was familiar enough with them to read them, and you are not he. As if sensing this, a magically startling convenience occurs before your weary eyes: the runes slowly reform into English: "Took quite a tumble didn't you? If only you could escape, you could see to your wounds. I do not recommend reentering the water, though. Doing so, by improvised craft or swimming will make me very angry. I will not allow you to escape to heal your wounds, though I make you this promise: if you heal your wounds, I will allow you to escape. And again, if you attempt to leave by any way other than satisfying this condition, I will both kill you and take eternal possession of your soul. -Acerlaf Eraksson"
You turn to look at the waves...and decide perhaps it is better to believe the protean sign, in light of other recent bizarre events.
How will you ever heal yourself though?
You decide you have no choice but to enter the out-of-place mine. As you pass its threshold you see a painfully familiar purple flash of light. You appear to be in an enormous mine, with mundane stone, not sand, walls and row after row of sheds and barrels. If nothing else, it is much cooler here. You feel yourself relaxing in the dim coolness of the mine. You want to lay down. You feel yourself relaxing too much. You are dying.
You are trapped in a magical prison. To escape, you must fully heal your wounds. You are badly injured (your humors are 300/300/300/300 at maximum, but are currently at 10/10/10/10). If you enter the water or otherwise escape without healing yourself first, you will die (and worse). If you somehow receive outside help, you die. Surveying the area, you see no signs of life and the tiles will never reload. You have all skills.
You have in your possession:
1
1
1
1
1 empty
1 empty
1 empty bark cup
In the Mine you find only:
1
1
1
1
1 Drying Rack
1,000 barrels of white tea.
1,000 barrels of water
1,000 barrels of white corn oil.
1,000 sheds filled with wood blocks.
1,000 sheds filled with dry boards.
1,000 sheds filled with lime.
1,000 sheds filled with granite.
1,000 sheds filled with clay.
How do you escape?
Answer (Spoilers, Obviously) and Epilogue:
Answer:
Eager to escape this prison, you use the wood blocks to build a whittler's bench. You slake your thirst with cups of white tea; it restores only one of your humors, sadly. You make a sharpened stick at the bench and use it and more blocks to construct a wooden shovel. You head back out to the beach and begin digging. The sun saps your scant remaining energy, but the tea is just enough to offset this. Eventually, you unearth a
. Delighted, you rush back to the mine. You mine a boulder from the wall using your pickaxe and chip away a piece of rubble. You take the rubble and bash open the and collect 3 
. You use your axe to make wood choppings from split wood blocks. You use them to fill your torch with tinder. You light your torch on the eternal flame. You fill the fireplace with wood blocks. You light the fireplace with your torch. You roast the crab meat and then hungrily devour the 
. You feel a portion of your vigor restored. You head back out to dig for more crabs until you are finally back at full strength.
Epilogue:
Once you feel certain--as certain as anything, anyway--your vitality has been fully restored, you are blinded yet again by a flash of purple light. You find yourself in almost total darkness (almost, thanks to your torch). The air is calm and still, but a different flavor of stale than you found in the magical beach mine.... Suddenly, there is a new source of light...a slowly expanding area of illumination in the distance. You realize that it is a large stone door sliding open. The light is the torchlight of your remaining companions. They call to you, unable to cross the massive chasm between you. You assure them you are OK, and tell them what they must do to make it across, so you may continue deeper into Acerlaf's tomb to claim his legendary hoard of treasure.
Your companions are at first incredulous but decide there is no alternative. They have come this far...suffered shame and the loss of three friends.... Each takes another's hand before leaping together into the chasm. You can only hope you are right. In rapid succession, there are 3 bursts of purple light. You shield your eyes. The light glints off something in the far distance. Perhaps treasure! You want to look...badly. Perhaps your arduous journey is at an end.... You decide to wait. Yes, it would be both rude and perilous to investigate alone. The minutes seem to crawl by. You become more curious at what else lie in the this room.... No, it is better to wait.
You begin dancing in place in anticipation. You look quite silly...but thankfully stop just in time as one brilliant--perhaps thrice as brilliant as any other--flash of purple light sears your eyes. Your friends have returned! As you each regain your sight the sum of your torchlight now illuminates the room in a more agreeable fashion.
You begin to tell them of the glinting you saw in the darkness...but its source is all too apparent to the party. The pristine carapace of a titanic horseshoe crab lurches into motion toward you. You and your party spring into motion before your jaws can close, headed for the exit. The hulking crab monster accelerates at an impossible rate. As testament to your party's cohesion and fondness for one another, you instinctively form a single column as you approach the narrow stone entrance of the room. You pass into the hallway but stop. You want to keep running, but find yourself at the same pit that teleported you to the magical prison. Would you face the same task? Would you be teleported to the same place? Would the giant crab abomination then be blocking your only avenue of escape? As you ponder these questions, the giant horseshoe crab slams into the doorway, causing quake so powerful you are all knocked prone. Rocks fall. Everyone dies. Acerlaf posts screenshots on HoB and lols. JC and Marp both post "Justice!" for reasons beyond your comprehension.
Eager to escape this prison, you use the wood blocks to build a whittler's bench. You slake your thirst with cups of white tea; it restores only one of your humors, sadly. You make a sharpened stick at the bench and use it and more blocks to construct a wooden shovel. You head back out to the beach and begin digging. The sun saps your scant remaining energy, but the tea is just enough to offset this. Eventually, you unearth a
. You feel a portion of your vigor restored. You head back out to dig for more crabs until you are finally back at full strength.Epilogue:
Once you feel certain--as certain as anything, anyway--your vitality has been fully restored, you are blinded yet again by a flash of purple light. You find yourself in almost total darkness (almost, thanks to your torch). The air is calm and still, but a different flavor of stale than you found in the magical beach mine.... Suddenly, there is a new source of light...a slowly expanding area of illumination in the distance. You realize that it is a large stone door sliding open. The light is the torchlight of your remaining companions. They call to you, unable to cross the massive chasm between you. You assure them you are OK, and tell them what they must do to make it across, so you may continue deeper into Acerlaf's tomb to claim his legendary hoard of treasure.
Your companions are at first incredulous but decide there is no alternative. They have come this far...suffered shame and the loss of three friends.... Each takes another's hand before leaping together into the chasm. You can only hope you are right. In rapid succession, there are 3 bursts of purple light. You shield your eyes. The light glints off something in the far distance. Perhaps treasure! You want to look...badly. Perhaps your arduous journey is at an end.... You decide to wait. Yes, it would be both rude and perilous to investigate alone. The minutes seem to crawl by. You become more curious at what else lie in the this room.... No, it is better to wait.
You begin dancing in place in anticipation. You look quite silly...but thankfully stop just in time as one brilliant--perhaps thrice as brilliant as any other--flash of purple light sears your eyes. Your friends have returned! As you each regain your sight the sum of your torchlight now illuminates the room in a more agreeable fashion.
You begin to tell them of the glinting you saw in the darkness...but its source is all too apparent to the party. The pristine carapace of a titanic horseshoe crab lurches into motion toward you. You and your party spring into motion before your jaws can close, headed for the exit. The hulking crab monster accelerates at an impossible rate. As testament to your party's cohesion and fondness for one another, you instinctively form a single column as you approach the narrow stone entrance of the room. You pass into the hallway but stop. You want to keep running, but find yourself at the same pit that teleported you to the magical prison. Would you face the same task? Would you be teleported to the same place? Would the giant crab abomination then be blocking your only avenue of escape? As you ponder these questions, the giant horseshoe crab slams into the doorway, causing quake so powerful you are all knocked prone. Rocks fall. Everyone dies. Acerlaf posts screenshots on HoB and lols. JC and Marp both post "Justice!" for reasons beyond your comprehension.
Did you get it right? Did you find another solution? Do you know to what "Acerlaf Eraksson" is a reference? Use spoiler tags, please, if anyone actually responds to this. Also, if you reply, please don't quote this longass post--lookin' at you, Dallane.
Can you guess what semi-afk Salem task I was doing the entire time I wrote this? Have I lost my mind?
![¦]](./images/smilies/troll.gif "Trollface")
